writing fixed width, space delimited CSV output in Python

Question

I would like to write a fixed width, space delimited and minimally quoted CSV file using Python\'s csv writer. An example of the output:

item1           item         


        

Answer 1

What does this do for you? I think you really were only missing the csv.QUOTE_NONE constant.

import csv
csv.register_dialect('spacedelimitedfixedwidth', delimiter=' ', quoting=csv.QUOTE_NONE)
with open('crappymainframe.out', 'rb') as f:
    reader = csv.reader(f, 'spacedelimitedfixedwidth')

It's a modification on the unixpwd dialect example at the bottom of the csv module docs.